Lost and Found
What is this place, she wondered. One minute ago she had been frantically searching for her wedding ring. She had felt a sudden jerk as if she was falling and then the next minute, she was sitting as if in a store room amongst the heap of things around her.
She tried to hold onto her glasses. She could not afford to lose them. Had there been an earthquake, she wondered? “No”, she heard a response outside her own head. She tried to move with difficulty since she was still stuck. She saw a tiny man, but he wasn’t looking at her. “No, there hasn’t been an earthquake and you have not lost your mind.” He remarked nonchalantly. “You have just landed in Lost and Found”. He finally looked up after stopping to write in the writing pad that he held in his hands.
“Lost and Found of Crystal Apartments?”, she cried.
“No, of course not.”, he snapped. “Lost and Found of the Earth”
Complete silence surrounded the room and then suddenly as if the room could not bear the silence any more, the heap came crashing down, with her almost buried under it.
“Give me your hand, quick.” He was still in a snappy mood it seems. Isn’t that ironic. Shouldn’t she be the one who is snappy considered how all the developments have been.
She emerged like a phoenix out of the ashes. As she gave the hand to him, and introduced, “Mia here”.
“I am Google or Bing or whatever you want to call me”, the strange man remarked. She smiled almost involuntarily.
“I know somethings about your world, you know”, he said as if he was finally warming up to her.
“What is this world?” she questioned.
“Oh…I can’t get into this long story, especially if you don’t want to be stuck here forever. Just think of it like a realm you are thrown into when you lose some very precious things”. “Conditions apply.” He added after a pause.
She looked at the rubbish around her. A rubber duck, a book, a teddy, key, a photograph…and heaps of papers.
Considering the open question on her face, he spoke up, “ Precious to you, not necessarily in monetary terms. By the way there is a 100 year old cheque lying somewhere in case you want it.”
She suddenly realized something else. “I wasn’t there alone. My fiance was there too, waiting and irritated. We are meeting after a year you know. I was getting ready to go out with him. Juggling a call from the hospital…It always comes in at the most inopportune time. And in this last minute rush the ring that I was putting on slipped down the finger. Where can it go. Under the sofa or chair or may be the flower pot I was standing next to?” She blabbered.
Then after a pause, she wondered aloud, “Wouldn’t he find it weird if I suddenly disappeared.”
“No he won’t. He would just think that you are zoned out. Anyways you will bounce back within a few seconds…if everything goes well.” He added mysteriously.
“If you call yourself Google, shouldn’t you help me find it in this crazy mess. Why don’t you keep all things organized. Maybe all papers should be stacked together, toys together and so on.” She couldn’t believe she was speaking these words.
“Describe it.” he ordered
“What do you mean?”, she asked equally innocently.
“Well, describe the way you would so that Google will find it”, he explained patiently
She nodded her head as if it was one of the most normal things to do.
“It’s diamond, shaped like a rose.” Thinking this would be sufficient she paused. She saw the heap in front vanish suddenly. She was left with a barrel full of diamond objects including many earrings, bracelets, etc. Looking at them she realised her mistake.
“ Oh, it’s a ring too….Diamond, rose shaped.” She repeated just in case the Google misunderstands.
The barrel reduced in size suddenly disappeared, and it was replaced by some sort of a bucket, that was full of rings.
She glanced at the Google man as if for further guidance. And the answer almost came to her intuitively, “Make the search more specific. Isn’t that what we would do on the actual search engine”.
She added more adjectives: “7–10 smaller diamonds, one red stone in the middle”. The pool remained sufficiently large. She suddenly had a brain wave and she triumphantly announced, “size of my ring finger”. Now a small tray, with five ringers in it, undistinguishable from one another. She felt totally defeated and perplexed.
Finally she blurted, “ What will happen if I choose the wrong one. Will I be stuck here forever.”
She knew J was never going to figure out if she ended up wearing a slightly different one. Might as well take a chance and go back to reality, if that was allowed.
Google man said solemnly. “Whatever you choose, you are going to end up in the real world. If you choose your actual lost one, you will land up in the real world and spot the ring and feel completely foolish to have overlooked it. But if you choose the wrong one, you land up in real life with no ring or rather you will never find the ring. The ring stays here.”
This was a different deal altogether. How will he react. Will he just hug her and let it go. Or will he keep pestering her about it till the end of eternity.
Lost in her thoughts she didn’t realise the Google Man quietly leave the room. He stepped into a long passage with many unending line of rooms next to each other. He saw his almost identical counterpart emerge from the other room, equally exasperated.
“It’s a lost case I believe. He seems quite confused. Hasn’t figured out which one. What about you?”
“Same here. Shortlisted to five of them but all of them look the same to her now. She needs to get her eyes checked again.”
The other Google man spoke after thinking for a bit, “What now? What if my boy chooses correctly and your girl doesn’t?”
“Well, the ring will be back in the world but their relationship….” he broke off.
“Hmm…my boy won’t be the reason for it. He seems sincere.”
“Don’t you dare question her. She is juggling so many things at a time. It’s not easy. Frankly, she can do better than him. But I think she loves this guy.” The Search Man said competitively.
He shook his head and with a renewed mission, he stepped inside the room.
She looked up and took his notice. He could see a tinge of water float in her eyes. He spoke up, “Well…what did you like the most about the ring. I am sure you have admired it at least a dozen time.”
She gazed into the corner as if she was looking at the day she set eyes on it.
“Well…actually he had given it to me long back, almost a year ago; just before he was going out of this country for a long term assignment. The ring was just the way I had wished for, small diamonds in the shape of a rose. Red stone in the middle. Initially I wore it every day and then… Covid struck. Wearing the full body suit as I went on the hospital rounds made me worry about losing the ring. So I removed it. Our calls continued..sometimes with a long gap. I wanted him to say more of how he missed me. But he is not much of a talker.
Sometimes I was so tired, I used to doze off in our calls. But he knew what I was going through. Never once did he complain. He used to jokingly say that a small protrusion on the ring, like a thorn on the ring is mainly our jobs that keep us away from each other”.
She suddenly paused. She jumped down towards the ring. She touched all of them. There it was…a tiny but conspicuous protrusion almost like a thorn. She touched it playfully and smiled.
She picked the ring and walked over to the tiny man and clutched his hands, “Thanks. I think I needed this. I mean…not just the ring, but a reminder.”
Man smiled back. And within a second he was gone and she was standing in her own room next to her cupboard. The drawer was open, and she realized that the ring had slipped into the open drawer.
“There it is.” Both of them remarked at the same time. She laughed as he looked at him. He looked equally relieved but his eyes were twinkling as if he had been on an adventure of his own and rediscovered something.
He slipped the ring back on her finger and clasped her hands within his. Her phone rang again.
“It’s okay, finish it. No rush. I am there”. He said calmly.
The above story is a short story for the story writing contest conducted by “Story Saturday”.
I am always perplexed by the idea of things getting lost, sometimes almost magically. That triggered the idea for this fun story about the magical land of lost and found. And I think sometimes to really value something, you have to lose it..once.
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